


Heartless

by OssaCordis



Series: The Human Heart [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Childhood, Drug Abuse, Friendship, Gen, Magical Realism, Mild Gore, kink meme fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-14
Updated: 2014-07-14
Packaged: 2018-02-08 21:39:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1957008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OssaCordis/pseuds/OssaCordis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is literally heartless, but that doesn’t mean he can’t feel. </p><p>
  <i>Written for a prompt on the kink meme.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heartless

**Author's Note:**

> Original prompt and fic can be found [here](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/22393.html?thread=131952249#t131952249). If I have time, or if there is interest in it, I may do a slash rewrite of this.
> 
> The modern-day incarnations of Sherlock Holmes et al. belong to Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss, and the BBC. The plot of this story and any original characters belong to me.

_“Ergo, the organ we call the heart and which is defined in our human consciousness, as the seat – or even deified as the throne – of all powerful emotion, from unbearable sorrow to ecstatic love, is in itself utterly without feeling.” – Rose Tremain, Restoration_

* * *

 “It’s not possible,” the doctors say, hovering over her and the dark-haired, blanketed bundle in her arms, waving their complicated medical instruments, and shaking their heads at nurses who cluck over the pair of them with unconcealed pity.

“He’s my child,” she says. “He lives and breathes, doesn’t he? Just like everyone else. I will not let him be a science experiment for the rest of his life. I’m taking him home.”

And she gathers her things, and dresses with dignity, and her husband carries her bag to the car. And in her arms: her son. Her beautiful little boy. Her second child, and no less beloved for it.

Her first son, Mycroft, greets them at the door, pushing past Granny, eager to see and hold his new brother.

“He’s cold, Mummy.”

“He’s perfect,” she says. “He’s absolutely perfect. There is nothing wrong with him.”

* * *

 His name is Sherlock, and there are many things wrong with him.

He doesn’t speak for five years, by which time most people have categorized him as simpleminded. He rarely cries, and smiles even less often. And he has no pulse, and no heart, and should not be alive.

But he does live, and bursts into fully-formed sentences at five years, three months, and twenty-two days. He is insatiable: wants words, things, knowledge. And his brother, self-proclaimed keeper and companion, would give him everything if he could. They dig in the garden for insects and rocks, read books to each other, and play games: pirates, and complicated math puzzles devised by Mummy, and deductions, their favourite. It’s the kind of storybook childhood that is too good to be true.

It is.

Sherlock comes home from his second day of junior school with the first in a series of bloody noses. He won’t say how it happened, not even to Mummy. Later, Mycroft catches him sitting in his bedroom, staring blankly at a wall and holding a book open in his lap, though he is not reading. It’s _Grimm’s Fairy Tales_ , opened to a well-thumbed page: _The Story of the Boy Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was_. Mycroft gently lifts the book from his brother’s cold hands and shuts it.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Nothing,” Sherlock says.

“Don’t lie to me. You know I can always tell when you lie.”

Sherlock turns would-be teary eyes to him. “I’m a freak.”

Mycroft grits his teeth. “Who told you that?”

“A boy at school. An older boy. He found out that I don’t have a heart, and he said I’m a freak. He… he said if I don’t have a heart, I’m not really human. I can’t feel anything. It doesn’t matter if… if people hit me. I can’t feel it. I can’t feel anything.”

Mycroft’s fingers curl into his palms until his nails almost draw blood. “Yes, you can,” he says in his strictest older brother voice. “You are like everyone else, in that respect. You feel just the same as I do, or Mum, or Dad. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Sherlock nods in understanding; but secretly, he remains unconvinced.

* * *

 He is twenty, and the music is horrible and the crowd of people is overwhelming, and he doesn’t want to be there anymore. But Sebastian and Victor are laughing and having a good time, so he supposes he is, too.

Sebastian leans over and shouts something into Victor’s ear, and Victor gives a little half-hearted smile and shrugs. Sherlock cannot hear them over the thud of the bass. It unpleasantly reverberates in his chest, and he thinks: this must be what it’s like, to have a heartbeat. How can anyone stand it?

Sebastian motions for him, and Sherlock pushes his way through a knot of people until he is close enough to hear.

“Come with me!”

“Where?” Sherlock shouts back.

“Just, come with me! I want to try something.”

Sebastian leads him to the toilets, Victor trailing after them and shaking his head. They all crowd inside a cubicle together. Sherlock’s ears are still dizzily ringing with music. Sebastian extracts a fifty pound note and a plastic bag of something white and powdery from his pocket. Sherlock doesn’t need to ask what it is.

“Have you ever tried this before?” Sebastian asks.

“No.” Sherlock’s voice is toneless.

“We, in the purest interests of scientific discovery, were wondering –”

“You,” Victor corrects.

“We,” Sebastian firmly says. “We were wondering what would happen, if you tried it? What with your weirdo circulatory system, and whatnot.”

Sherlock turns to leave the cubicle, and Sebastian grabs his shirtsleeve. “Oh, come on, join us. Try, at least, to look like you’re having fun.”

Sherlock, the perpetual odd man out, lets himself be drawn back.

“It will feel good.” Sebastian grins like a shark.

“Really good,” Victor agrees, with a nod and an encouraging smile. Sherlock licks his lips and nods and watches Sebastian painstakingly cut three lines on the lid of toilet. It’s disgusting. He doesn’t really want to be a part of this.

Sebastian is first, with business-like efficiency, and then Victor, indolent and heavy-lidded. Sherlock studies their technique, accepts the rolled up note, and inhales like it’s the thousandth time he’s done this.

At first… nothing. And then he feels… he feels…

He feels everything.

* * *

 Mycroft picks him up from rehab the first and second time. The third time, he sends a car and Detective Inspector Lestrade.

“Hello, Sherlock,” the detective says, a tight smile on his face as he offers a handshake and lofts Sherlock’s suitcase into the boot. They are familiar enough with each other by now that Lestrade doesn’t even flinch at Sherlock’s pulseless skin.

“Lestrade,” Sherlock replies, letting the name lazily roll off his tongue as though he does not give a single care in the world. He doesn’t.

The ride back to Mycroft’s house is nearly unbearable. Lestrade keeps up a stream of uninteresting chatter about his family, the weather, the latest football results…. If only he would talk about murder.

They are nearly at Mycroft’s ivy-laden townhouse when Lestrade leans forward in his seat and taps Sherlock on the knee.

“Are you listening to me?”

“No.”

Lestrade sighs. “Listen. No, really. Listen. I’m not one to meddle in other people’s private business – outside of work, that is. But, you’re breaking your brother’s heart, Sherlock. I don’t know if you understand what it feels like when…”

Sherlock’s voice is so caustic it could burn through metal. “Oh? Do tell me, Lestrade?”

Lestrade recoils. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say it like that…”

But something inside Sherlock has shattered, and a relentless rush of words pours forth. “You think I’m not quite human. You, and all the boys and girls at Scotland Yard. There’s something not right about that Sherlock bloke, you say, when I’m not in the room. Weird, isn’t he? And there is something unnatural about a man with no heart, I grant you. Am I alive, Lestrade? Am I dead? These are all valid questions. What makes a human: the delicate neurochemistry that produces emotion, or a beating heart?”

Lestrade’s face is carefully neutral. He knows better than to answer the question and expose himself to Sherlock’s razor-sharp intellect. But he never implies again that Sherlock is less than a living, breathing, and feeling human.

* * *

 It’s one of the most violent crime scenes Sherlock has ever seen. Blood on every wall, and across the ceiling in thick, scarlet spatters. Fingers and toes scattered to each corner of the room. Chest wrenched open, ribs broken. Heart, missing.

Sherlock stares into the angry, red-black cavity where it should be nestled between fleshy, pink lungs. What would it look like, if he ripped his own chest open? Would one even be able to tell that something meant to be there was missing? Or would there just be smooth lungs lying flush against the sternum?

He stares for so long that even the forensics crew begin to look a little unnerved.

“Freak.” Philip Anderson hums the insult under his breath, but not so quietly that Sherlock can’t hear it. An echo of his schooldays. He unconsciously begins to draw his lips back in an angry snarl, but catches himself. He must not react. He must be as inhuman as they think he is. A machine.

“He gets off on it,” Sergeant Donovan mutters.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Anderson make a sour face. “I doubt it,” he whispers. “I heard from a doctor at St Bart’s, that since he’s heartless, he can’t feel anything, not even… arousal…”

Donovan can barely stifle her laugh.

“Oy, shut it, everybody!” Lestrade snaps, catching the very end of the whispered conversation as he enters the room. “Anything, Sherlock?”

Sherlock cannot tear his eyes away from the empty chest cavity. Something nauseous and horrible is churning inside of him. “Not yet,” he says, his voice perfectly calm.

* * *

 “I read about you in medical school,” John says one day, about three weeks after he moves into 221B Baker Street.

Sherlock freezes in place at his microscope. “Oh?”

“You were – are – the boy born with no heart. I mean, they don’t publish your name in textbooks. Patient confidentiality, you know. But… I mean… you are, aren’t you?”

The doctor is more observant than Sherlock has given him credit for. He resumes his work scanning a slide of hairs under the 40x objective. “Yes.”

John smiles. “Amazing.” It’s not the first time he’s said this to Sherlock, but it never ceases to startle him. “I’m sorry if I’m intruding. But, what does it feel like?”

Sherlock violently pushes the microscope away from himself and stands up. “It feels like nothing,” he snaps. John takes a step back and lets him storm out of the kitchen, to his bedroom, where he slams the door.

It takes twenty minutes for him to calm down enough to realise that John is the first person he has ever met who assumes that being heartless feels like anything at all.

* * *

 He is febrile and sweaty and coughing, but that doesn’t stop him from trying to fight off John and his stethoscope.

“C’mon, Sherlock, this is ridiculous,” John says, holding up one hand in a gesture of truce as Sherlock glares at him from the other side of the kitchen table, armed with a lighter and an aerosol spray bottle of something that is almost undoubtedly flammable. John doesn’t want to test this theory, however.

“I’m fine,” Sherlock wheezes.

John eyebrows creep towards his hairline in disbelief. “Oh?”

Sherlock can’t answer because another coughing fit has started.

John edges around the table and gently relieves Sherlock of the lighter, since that seems like the fastest and easiest way for Sherlock to cause havoc. “I just want to listen to your lungs to make sure it’s not bronchopneumonia. Then I’ll leave you alone.”

Sherlock practically wilts in surrender. John manoeuvres him into a chair.

“Deep breath,” he commands, sliding the earpieces of his stethoscope into his ears, and the diaphragm against Sherlock’s chest. Sherlock shakily inhales; his exhale is clear. John carefully listens all over. It takes him a moment to realise what is missing: the steady lub-dub whoosh of heart sounds. He is fascinated, in spite of himself. But Sherlock is growing fidgety and impatient, and it seems like an invasion of his privacy to listen any longer.

“Not bronchopneumonia,” John concedes, backing away from his victoriously smirking flatmate. “But absolutely no cases until that cough clears up a bit!”

* * *

 “You machine!” John shouts, and there really isn’t anything else he could say that would hurt Sherlock more. Sherlock lets him shout. It needs to be like this.

But John – curse him – comes running back. Sherlock knows how the plan is supposed to go. He calls John, listens to the mobile ring, hears John answer it.

“Hey, Sherlock, are you ok?”

His throat is closing in on itself and he can feel tears pooling in his eyes. Real tears, not the ones he learned so many years ago to mimic real emotion. “Turn around and walk back the way you came now.”

Why is this so difficult?

Sometimes, at night, when everyone but him is asleep and London is quiet and his mind is restless, he thinks back to his childhood. And he thinks of all the unkind people he has encountered through the years, and the ways he was unkind to them in turn. It’s easy to be cruel. It’s so much harder to care.

He jumps from the roof of St Bart’s. He hears John’s scream, he lies still and cold on the pavement. John grasps at his wrist, frantically searching for a pulse he knows is not there. Being dead, as it turns it out, is something Sherlock excels at. He lets other people cart his body away on a stretcher and pretends he is not there, and it does not hurt.

Hours later, when he lets himself into Mycroft’s house in the early, pre-dawn hours of the morning, he begins to weep all over again. The emotions he’s never quite allowed himself to fully feel well up from some deep, confusing place within. The pain is excruciating.

Mycroft is sitting in the shadows of his kitchen, glass of untouched scotch in his hand. “I told you,” he says, with not even a hint of smugness in his voice. “All those years ago. You are exactly like the rest of us. You feel the same things we feel. You have no special advantage over the rest of us.”

“I… I’m not the same as you,” Sherlock insists. “Caring is not an advantage, et cetera, Mycroft. You wish you could be as heartless as me.” His speech is rather ruined when he has to blot his face with an already sodden handkerchief.

Mycroft comes to stand by his brother, and squeezes his shoulder. “Brother mine, I can still tell when you lie.”

* * *

 There is no precedent for how to act upon returning from the dead. Sherlock isn’t sure what emotions he is meant to feel, or the expression he should wear on his face. Contrite? Ecstatic? Sombre?

He walks into the restaurant and pauses, surveying the crowd of happy diners, flushed with drink and laughing and smiling. What a gift, to be an ordinary human being.

John is sitting alone at a table, waiting for someone. Suddenly, Sherlock is nervous. And also excited. And contented. And a thousand other things, a swell of feelings. He remembers now. He forgets sometimes, but now that he see John…

“Extraordinary!” John said to him, on day one. Not because of his lack of a heart or pulse, because those things don’t matter to John. It’s all fine, with John. He is fine the way he is. He always has been.


End file.
